April 5, 2025

JONATHAN TURLEY: The liberals’ license: How the left finds release in an age of rage.

“We should replace our piece of crap Constitution.”

Those words from author Elie Mystal, a regular commentator on MSNBC, are hardly surprising from someone who previously called the Constitution “trash” and urged not just the abolition of the U.S. Senate but also of “all voter registration laws.”

But Mystal’s radical rhetoric is becoming mainstream on the left, as shown by his best-selling books and popular media appearances.

There is a counter-constitutional movement building in law schools and across the country. And although Mystal has not advocated violence, some on the left are turning to political violence and criminal acts. It is part of the “righteous rage” that many of them see as absolving them from the basic demands not only of civility but of legality.

They are part of a rising class of American Jacobins — bourgeois revolutionaries increasingly prepared to trash everything, from cars to the Constitution.

The Jacobins were a radical group in France that propelled that country into the worst excesses of the French Revolution. They were largely affluent citizens, including journalists, professors, lawyers, and others who shredded existing laws and destroyed property. It would ultimately lead not only to the blood-soaked “Reign of Terror” but also to the demise of the Jacobins themselves as more radical groups turned against them.

Of course, it is not revolution on the minds of most of these individuals. It is rage.

Rage is the ultimate drug. It offers a release from longstanding social norms — a license to do those things long repressed by individuals who viewed themselves as decent, law-abiding citizens.

Across the country, liberals are destroying Tesla cars, torching dealerships and charging stations, and even allegedly hitting political dissenters with their cars.

In August of 2019, Nancy Pelosi was quoted as saying, “You have to be ready to take a punch. And therefore you have to be ready to throw a punch—for the children.” And that was after Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson attempted to assassinate Steve Scalise, and Rand Paul was attacked in 2017.

The year after Pelosi’s quote followed a summer of “fiery, but mostly peaceful” arson and looting. How will the left amp up their attacks next beyond vandalizing Teslas?

(Or as America’s Newspaper of Record predicted in 2022: Authorities Warn Tonight’s Protests May Escalate From ‘Mostly Peaceful’ To ‘Somewhat Peaceful.’)

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 140

CORRECTION:

Posted at 12:07 pm by Glenn Reynolds 40

BILL ACKMAN ON TARIFFS:

Posted at 8:47 am by Glenn Reynolds 283